EL CAJON  The International Friendship Festival, a popular event in El Cajon until it was halted in 2003 because of financial reasons, may be on for 2014.

The weekend festival promoting ethnic unity began in 1991, born from an idea of then-Mayor Joan Shoemaker, whose young daughters told her about various multicultural events at their public schools.

Filled with an array of food from faraway lands, local people would dress in native garb and dance, create art, share crafts, offer mini teaching sessions, play games with kids and perform music on three stages. Representatives came from places as diverse and culturally rich as Russia, China, Mexico, Iraq and the Hawaiian islands. The theme of the festival was always “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”

With more than 60 different cultures represented and upward of 100 booths, the International Friendship Festival for more than a decade brought thousands to downtown El Cajon to peruse and learn, or just have a bite to eat.

But when the city fell on hard financial times, it was no longer able to subsidize the “celebration of food and friendship,” as Councilman Gary Kendrick noted at Tuesday's City Council meeting.

Kendrick talked up the idea of bringing the festival back, suggesting to the rest of the council and City Manager Doug Williford that the city restart it in spring 2014.

The council and Williford unanimously agreed, and the city is looking into the feasibility.

“Our budget is in much better shape than it's been in years,” Kendrick said. “Sales tax is up, car sales are up. We want to maintain the momentum of resurgence of downtown especially. We expect ECPAC (East County Performing Arts Center) to reopen in summer of 2014 and a brewery to reopen (at the site of the closed Downtown El Cajon Brewing Co.) within the next six months with a new operator.

“We cut to the bone in the Great Recession and the Friendship Festival ... Well now our financial forecast has improved. And I know we would get more than 100,000 people at this event every year.”

Although he wasn't the city manager during the festival's heyday, Williford called the event “maybe the high point” for the city, citing heavy attendance and positive feedback.

He said this year's centennial celebration, last fall's crowded Hauntfest, and the popular weekly Farmer's Market, car show and concert events, show the city is gaining strength in numbers.

“The bigger picture is that this falls in line with our strategy and vision to rebrand El Cajon's downtown public space as the major outdoor event area in the region,” Williford said. “The Friendship Festival, would be in my view, the biggest of all the events we have, like the Mother Goose Parade. This has potential to be biggest of all.”

The city estimates that more than 800 volunteers worked the festival every year and nearly 1,400 ethnic community members assisted throughout the weekend celebration to host booths.

Williford estimated bringing in and easily accommodating at least 50,000 people a day in the Prescott Promenade and nearby areas of downtown, and was looking at it as a family-focused, kid-oriented event.

“We are seeing the best way to put that together,” he said. “We're going to look for partners and sponsors around the county.”

The city's mayor from 1990-98, Shoemaker, who still lives in El Cajon and follows closely what the city does, has offered to help any way she can.

“People still ask me about it,” Shoemaker said. “They tell me it was the best thing the city has ever done. I am delighted to hear the news about it coming back. It was very successful in bringing the community together. And what a great way to eat your way around the world!”

Shoemaker said the opening and closing ceremonies, with people dressed in native costumes with flags and banners, was moving. She said thousands would sing together “I'm Proud to Be an American” and it would bring some to tears.

“However they do it (in the future), it may not be the same, but if it brings the community together, that's what's important,” she said.